The Let's Play Archive

Part 2: Episode II: Meet Billy, Bye Eddie, Hi Doggie

When last we left our heroine, she had wandered onto a train stopped in the middle of the woods. Also, dozens of people were slaughtered by slimy sentient vaginas. With that said, let's begin...

Rebecca stumbles in to find a derelict bloodbath. Just the sort of thing you'd immediately call in for back-up from your squad of far more experienced and capable teammates, right? Fuck that noise. Rebecca is just going to wander about aimlessly and hope for the best.

Anyhow, Rebecca is equipped with your standard issue pea shooter and a pair of magazines. It's a bit troubling when the medic is one of the better initially equipped characters in the series, offensive capability wise. Yet she doesn't have a single damn healing item. I think we have our first taste of S.T.A.R.S.' competency level.

Rebecca also has this handy medical kit. Which does absolutely nothing other than add a very idiotic mechanic which I'll elaborate on in a bit.

Right, then. That door to the east in the first picture is locked and demands a dining room key. Let's journey west.

The context for this pair of lines is missing in picture. There is what is, quite obviously, a faint crackling of a radio. And now she decides to throw on police academy 101.

"My dead eyes demand a banquet of your soul."

Do they still really need to make a big deal out of the initial boogie-woogie zombies scene? I mean, maybe if the zombie were on fire or had a silly hat. Maybe a Scream mask. I don't know. I bet it's just a rotting middle aged guy with an eagle's peak.

Told ya.

This chick must be a distant relative of Harry Mason, as she's far more interested in the shitty F/M radio than the mutilated corpse she finds on a ritzy ruined train car.

"What would you doooooo if I saaaang out of tuuuune? Would you stand up and walk out on meeeee?"

"Oh, baby I get by with a little help from my friends!" "By with a little help from my friends."

So, it's the zombies. They bite and shit. I think that about covers it. Rebecca can just run past them, but since that would mean taking a bit of damage to make it by and Becky is the weakest main character in taking damage, by a sizable margin (we're talking 1-2 bites to make it into caution weak), this is frowned upon.

Oh well, S.T.A.R.S. doesn't equip its medics with bullets for shits and giggles.

You'll notice we're back in FMV mode for this five second cutscene. Much like in Dead Aim, Capcom farmed out a sizable chunk of the cutscenes to be made into poorly aging CGI cinematics. As such, there are only three human characters in the entire game which actually have an ingame character model. We will meet all three this very update.

Moving on to the next train car. Doors present themselves and their bounty of glorious door opening load screens.

Behind door number one we have... Could it be? It is! A file! This game offers a lot of light reading, so buckle up.

Passenger's Diary

******July 14th******Then you'll listen if you know what's good for you.

"This group will likely die quickly and horribly. The latter group will likely die slowly and horribly."

******July 16th******Happened to my N-6285 last month. Always a botter.

The 'crustacean t-virus'? Umbrella, what the fuck? <throws hands in the air>

But since this is Umbrella, the monster is probably out of its cage and creeping up behind this prick to gore him just as he's writing this.

The head being a massive weak point? Never seen that trouble in any media before.

Why the hell is there absolutely no cooperation in this company? You've got some mountain lab fucking around with god know's what. These jokers have some sort of giant enemy crab. Willie Birkin is fucking around with vagina blobs underground. Then there's some frozen bitch in Antarctica with mutant ants. None of these people ever talk to one another.

I'm posting a screencap of this date because they honest to god fucked up the month in the first file of the game.

I noticed Resident Evil 0 never mentions this, but the 'bizarre suburb murder cases' are about people getting friggin' eaten. And this guy is wondering if his company's man eating monstrosity spawning virus, of which there is a pre-established biological disaster in one of the labs, is to blame.

Little did he know, in a completely unrelated incident, he'd die of getting orally raped by a mutant leech with an eye growing out of its back. Sucks.

The next room is the obligatory type writer save room. With another file in it... Bugger...

Investigation Orders

"Just give her a new coat of paint, change the lightbulbs, and get ride of the thirty year old zombie monkeys and it'll be good as new."

I could have transcribed it, but I've got better things to do.

Like explaining a fabulous new gameplay mechanic. Now, if you know Resident Evil inventory menus, you'll know they're rather limited. If not, well just take a look at the screen, ya nitwit. Rebecca here has six slots of which she can hold items. Every item takes up one slot in most titles (big items like shotguns and such take up two in this game, because Capcom is full of jerks.)

In the past, one would have to go find one of the magical save room item boxes to dump excess inventory to free room for keys and whatnot. But no longer! Resident Evil Zero adds the glorious new ability of just dumping shit on the spot.

Behold! The ink ribbon is now on the floor! A marvel, truly, and a feature which should have been in the series long ago. Now, no more backtracking to an item box to have the space for a set of keys. We can just get the puzzle over with and dump our unneeded items in the box later.

Just one small catch. The magic item boxes? Yeah, they're gone. So that excess shit you drop on the floor? You're going to have yourself some self imposed backtracking to pick it up now. And instead of a tidy menu with item names, you're going to have a floor full of glittering items, since anyone with half a brain is just going to dump their loot in a hub area or a save point anyway.

In short, one step forward and two steps back.

Alright, let's explore the rest of this train car. Conductor's Office key. Got it. Keycard reader on the end there. Got it. Five minutes into the game and we're already at three required keys.

Luckily, the game's first 'dead fellow with a death grip on a sparkling key' makes his appearance.

You have to go into the inventory screen, spin the key, and read the tag to get the proper key name. But, to save time, it's for the dining car.

Meanwhile, someone has managed to sneak up on Rebecca down a hallway on a hard wood floor. Solid Snake must be in the house.

Well, he's got the mullet going for himself, at least.

She says this as one would read a hard to pronounce name off a piece of paper and not as one would react with, say, a gun pointed in your face by a serial killer.

Rebecca's dire snuff fetish comes to light.

"Uhh... I already knew that. But thanks for adding to the conversation."

!!!

To spoil the plot, yes Billy Coen is in no way the Nemesis, he is just awkward in his method of acting tough.

"Now if you'll excuse me, I need to vanish into thin air as the only thing in this direction is that locked dining room and you have the only key in your pocket."

"I ended up with my wallet stolen and a really sore anus."

"I could even pull out my gun! Don't think I won't motion to pull out my gun!"

And this is why most Special Forces teams don't hire 18 year old girls.

Since we're already at it, Capcom decides we might as well throw in a character death and a new enemy introduction into this same scene.

"Uhh... Sorry... Wrong game..."

Is he alright?

Look at how high those windows are! Alright? Guy should be in the Olympics.

"My script... They ate my... Ad-libbing... Not good at... Monsters..."